Publishers with Ads.txt Saw a Surprising Amount of Revenue Uplift Over Those Without

If you haven’t yet implemented an ads.txt file on your website, you may be missing out on revenue.

The IAB-backed ads.txt initiative is important, and it’s one that we’ve been supportive of from the beginning—it brings transparency to an otherwise difficult to navigate marketplace by allowing publishers the ability to publicly authorize digital sellers on their site.

The initiative aims to tackle many issues such as avoiding arbitrage traffic, fake domains and other types of unauthorized inventory. While it is an obviously noble effort on behalf of the industry, it’s more than that—publishers who have implemented the ads.txt file are already seeing revenue uplift.

Publishers see up to 11% more revenue after the implementation of ads.txt.

We took a look at Taboola enterprise publishers in the US and in EMEA. In a one month period, from October 2017 to November 2017, enterprise publishers that implemented ads.txt saw an uplift in revenue of up to 11 percent over those who did not implement ads.txt.

The data includes nearly 4000 publishers and was extracted from a controlled environment—the ads.txt file was the only change to these sites over the course of the month.

It’s becoming clear: brands buy where brands feel safe.

Brands can now verify whether or not their partners are authorized sellers on certain sites. If they don’t see the authorized relationship, they may abandon all advertising with that site and this could have a significant negative impact on publisher revenue.

Our ads.txt participation is the latest in a line of initiatives to promote transparency and brand safety in the industry—following our TAG verification, and our recent induction into the Coalition for Better Ads.

Bottom line—implementing ads.txt is good for advertisers and for publishers with a direct effect—up or down—on the bottom line.